Aurora, Illinois, April 25, 2016: Lifestream, a haunting text adventure by independent developer Unimatrix Productions that aims to revolutionize interactive fiction, is now available for purchase on the PC, iOS®, and Android™.

In Lifestream, players take on the roles of Catholic priest Randolph Holton and his son, John, in their search for an enigmatic realm known only as “the Lifestream.” The game combines classic room-based explorative text game mechanics with a stylish graphical interface and plenty of bells and whistles like pictures and sound. At its core, however, Lifestream remains true to the essence of classic interactive fiction.

Lifestream plays like an interactive novel. You make a series of choices that determine what happens next in the story. However, unlike traditional choose your own adventure games, gamebooks, and visual novels, Lifestream includes advanced adventure-based mechanics, such as a compass for navigation, a full-fledged inventory system, character interaction with branching dialog, and a variety of complex puzzles to solve. It features 8+ hours of gameplay, over 65,000 words (the length of an entire novel), 150 pieces of artwork, 30 unlockable achievements, and an hour-long soundtrack.

Here is an official statement from the developer " The format is different. The game now plays like an interactive novel. The story has been expanded upon, and gameplay has been revised with new puzzles. Of the two, everyone who has played both so far much prefers the remake. I explain a lot of the lingering questions left in the original, and I added in lots of foreshadowing and references to events in future games to come in the series."

I should have read more closely. I'm going to buy the new Lifestream today and look into the engine. Game making with photographs a la Carol Reed is a pipe dream of mine. I think I got as far as turning on and off light switches in some freeware I tried.